WDS hosted two successful events at the premier international climate science conference Our Common Future under Climate Change in Paris on 6 and 8 July. Slides and video recordings are available via the events' pages: ♦ Side-event – Trusted Data Services to Support Climate Change Research ♦ Parallel session – Quality and Availability of Data for Global Sustainability
WDS also ...

The deadline for Abstract Submissions for the SCOSTEP–WDS VarSITI Workshop has been extended until 21 August 2015. However, a provisional programme and more details on the VarSITI Data Analysis Session can be found on the Workshop website. Note that Registration for the Workshop is free of charge, and should be completed by 15 September 2015 using the following Form . Moreover, a ...

On 23 July, Dr Herbert Van de Sompel presented WDS Webinar #6 on the perspectives gained over the past fifteen years he has spent tackling information interoperability problems for web-based scholarship. In this talk, he illustrated the shift from a repository- to a web-centric approach by means of design patterns from various interoperability efforts, including Open Annotation, Memento, ...

The DLI Service: An Open and Universal Data–Literature Interlinking Service

21 Jul 2015

A blog post by Paolo Manghi and Sandro La Bruzzo (OpenAIRE)

Sharing links between the published literature and datasets is crucial to achieve the full potential of research data publishing. This article presents the coordination and implementation efforts of the ICSU-WDS–RDA Data Publishing Services Working Group (DPS-WG) and the OpenAIRE infrastructure towards realizing and operating an open and universal data-literature interlinking service (DLI Service). The service is the result of an open collaboration between major stakeholders in the field of data publishing. It provides access to a graph of dataset–literature and dataset–dataset links collected from a variety of major data centres, publishers, and research organizations. On the basis of feedback from content providers and consumers, the service will also enable the incremental refinement of an interlinking data model and exchange format, towards shaping up a universal, cross-platform, cross-discipline solution for sharing dataset–literature links.

Introduction and vision

Challenges to realize the full potential of research data exist at different levels—from cultural aspects, such as proper rewards and incentives, to policy and funding, and to technology. The challenges are interconnected and impact a diversity of stakeholders in the research data landscape—including researchers, research organizations, funding bodies, data centres, and publishers. To make progress in overcoming barriers and building a stronger research data infrastructure, it is essential that the different stakeholders work together to address common issues and move forward on a common path. Alongside other organizations, the ICSU World Data System (ICSU-WDS), the Research Data Alliance (RDA), and OpenAIRE provide useful forums for such collaborations. In particular, they are today working in synergy on an initiative that brings together different parties in the research data landscape with the objective of creating the Data Literature Interlinking Service (DLI Service), namely, 'an open, freely accessible, web-based service that enables its users to identify datasets that are associated with a given article, and vice versa'. At the moment of writing, members of the initiative include: the ICSU-WDS–RDA DSP-WG, OpenAIRE, RDA, ICSU-WDS, STM, CrossRef, DataCite, ORCID, the Australian National Data Service, and the RMap project. The vision is that of moving away from several bilateral arrangements that characterizes the research ecosystem today, towards establishing common standards and tools that sit in the middle and interact with all parties (see Figure). Such a transition would facilitate interoperability between platforms and systems operated by the different parties, reduce systemic inefficiencies in the ecosystem, and ultimately enable new tools and functionalities to the benefit of researchers.

The service

The DLI Service populates and provides access to a graph of 'authoritative' dataset–literature links collected and aggregated from a variety of major data centres, publishers, and research organizations. It is intended to offer facilities for the following classes of actors:

– End users: Searching and browsing the graph of links via the Prototype PORTAL– Third-party service developers: Accessing publications and datasets in the graph via programmatic APIs– Content providers: Willing to feed high-quality authoritative links between publications and datasets or between datasets to the service (complete list of content providers).

Note: Formal data acquisition policies, SLAs, and data provider registration procedures will be produced at a later stage; currently each 'application' is processed independently with bilateral agreements. on the basis of feedback from content providers and consumers, The DLI Service will refine its underlying interlinking data model and exchange format to make it a universal, cross-platform, cross-discipline solution for collecting and sharing dataset–literature links, balancing between the information that can be shared across content providers and the information needed by its consumers.

Next steps

In the forthcoming months, further work will be carried out towards the delivery of a production service that is fully reliable in terms of QoS and quality of content. The following actions will be undertaken:

Definition of a content acquisition policy: minimal quality requirements to be respected by content providers in order for their publications, datasets and relative relationships to be aggregated by the system;

Definition of SLAs for content providers: make sure content providers are aware and agree on how their content (metadata) will be made openly accessible via the service;

'Giving Researchers Credit for Their Data': Your Help With our Survey Request

JISC (United Kingdom) is supporting our group to research the case for and develop an API and ‘helper app’ that allows researchers who have deposited data in a repository to automatically submit a ‘data article’ to a journal at the click of a button (JISC’s Research Data Spring site)

The proposed API will transfer data and metadata from the repository to a journal’s submission system, with an intermediary ‘helper app’ allowing authors to add their manuscript, references and other necessary information before submission. Article metadata will be sent back to the repository upon publication. These tools will be designed for maximum interoperability and made freely available.

This initiative will make it much easier for authors to obtain credit, visibility and peer review for their data via data article publication. This will have knock-on benefits for other stakeholders: journals will receive more submissions and link referrals, repositories will gain more deposits and more complete metadata, and readers will have better methodological detail to help them reuse or replicate data.

We are keen to hear from interested stakeholders, especially publishers and repositories. To that end, we've compiled 2 short surveys (approximately 10 minutes long) to enhance the scope and utility of the project. Please take part in either the Publishers or Repositories survey—links below—and feel free to pass this message on to others.

A new data release by NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (WDS Regular Member) offers insights into the extent of global human exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) over more than a decade. It features improved accuracy, a longer time span, and higher spatial resolution than the previous version.

The dataset consists of a series of global grids representing three-year running averages, from 1998–2012, derived from measurements of Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) from three different NASA instruments: MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), MISR (Multi- angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer), and SeaWIFS (Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor). These global grids of estimated PM2.5 surface concentrations are useful for health and environmental research, and have already served as a valuable input to the World Health Organization global burden of disease study.

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Research Data Management

11 May 2015

The open access International Journal of Geo-Information of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS)—a Scientific Union of ICSU—has issued a call for papers for their Special Issue on "Research Data Management".

This Special Issues will explore new trends and developments in the management of data (e.g., research data, spatial data created in a specific or interdisciplinary context, etc.). All kinds of data intensive sciences will be considered, as well as aspects of data handling and processing that concern the conduct of research. We invite original research contributions covering a broad variety of aspects related to data management in different research fields and organizations. We encourage papers across disciplines that focus on the themes of this Special Issue. Topics include, but are not limited to: